“Now that Apple Computer has started using Intel chips, is it time for businesses to replace their Windows PCs with computers from the company that introduced personal computing to the world? Probably not,” Thomas Claburn and Darrell Dunn report for InformationWeek.
“By using standard Intel chips in its computers, Apple is assured of an abundant supply of state-of-the-art silicon at commodity prices. It also means that its Macintosh computers can keep pace with Windows machines as Intel keeps improving processor performance. And by rolling out Intel-based computers last week, six months ahead of schedule, Apple avoids a slowdown in sales, as customers won’t be waiting around for the new models,” Claburn and Dunn report. “For Apple users, the news is all good: The new computers using Intel’s Core Duo dual-core chips offer two to five times the performance of previous Apple computers. And Apple is selling the PCs for the same price as its older, slower computers.”
“But for companies that mainly use Windows computers, the faster Intel-based Macs don’t provide many reasons to make a quick switch to new hardware and a new operating system. The reasons most businesses don’t use Macs–insufficient software availability, compatibility, and interoperability–won’t disappear simply because Apple switched processors. David Frederickson, program director for defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp., has long used Apple computers at home. But the company’s move to Intel processors probably won’t change the computer systems Northrop buys, mostly because government contracts generally require the use of Windows. ‘The current version of the Mac OS is far superior to the Windows OS as far as the user interface and the security you can set up,’ he says. ‘But the type of chip in the system isn’t the deciding factor. It’s basically the operating system and functionality they wrap around it.’ That means Apple is unlikely to increase its share of the business market any time soon. But the “halo effect” of the spectacularly popular iPod and Apple’s easy-to-use digital-lifestyle computer software, along with the move to Intel chips, may help the company grab more of the consumer market,” Claburn and Dunn report.
“Apple is starting to gain some ground. It sold 1.25 million Macs during the last three months of 2005, up from 1.05 million a year earlier. That increase helped fuel record quarterly revenue of $5.7 billion, though most of the growth came from sales of 14 million iPods, up 10 million units from the same period a year ago,” Claburn and Dunn report.
“Eric Seiden, a VP at wholesale distributor and importer Interstate Screw Corp., which has five Macs and two Windows computers. ‘It’s not necessarily a pro-Mac thing, but it’s an anti-Microsoft and -Windows thing,’ he says. ‘Windows is prone to viruses and security flaws. My whole goal is I want the computer to work for me, and I don’t want to spend my whole life fixing the damn things.’ [But], as long as crucial business apps from vendors such as Oracle and SAP aren’t available on the Mac, Apple’s computers–regardless of which chip is inside–won’t be a serious option for many businesses,” Claburn and Dunn report.
Full article, with interesting survey results about why some businesses use and for what purposes, here.
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“For Apple users, the news is all good: The new computers using Intel’s Core Duo dual-core chips offer two to five times the performance of previous Apple computers.”
This info is used quite a bit in news articles.
Doesn´t it make all the previous Macs looks like slow pigs? That Intel running computers were always superior to the PowerPC Macs?
I would like to see some real time tests of software on the Mactels to see if they are 2-5 times faster. Anybody got a new Mactel? How is it in the speed dept?
That would be a very ‘head in the sand’ response by all those people interviewd.
You Can Lead A Horse To Water But You Can’t Make Him Drink.
>David Frederickson, program director for defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp., has long used Apple computers at home. But the company’s move to Intel processors probably won’t change the computer systems Northrop buys, mostly because government contracts generally require the use of Windows. ‘The current version of the Mac OS is far superior to the Windows OS as far as the user interface and the security you can set up,’ he says. >
Government offices are years behind the times. Oh, and it’s your money they p-ss away, so what do they care???
HI
I wish these writers of these articles we read and what they write would take a few pc classes especially Comp 101. Maybe than they would really understand the difference between cisc and risc processors. It’s like saying cray computers are slower than desktop computers in there eyes…. Get it write.. Joke
“insufficient software availability, compatibility, and interoperability–won’t disappear simply because Apple switched processors. “
Amazing the continued generalizations. Yeah not ALL software is available, but folks this is the real reason for the switch and the atom bomb is yet to be dropped.
The fact that the chip isn’t the deciding factor is jsut the thing. Apple wants to make this an OS vs OS battle and eliminate the processor as a reason to object. as well as level the software playing field.
Huh, corporate IT drones. Don’t expect any miracles guys. We need Wine/Codeweavers on Mac/Intel NOW! Only then are we even gonna see the forward looking ones rethink.
“You Can Lead A Horse To Water But You Can’t Make Him Drink.”
And you can lead a whore to Vassar, but you can’t make her think.
Yeah, so what’s the point, I agree that that just because Macs now are using Intel doesn’t mean there will suddendly be a mass exodus in the business community..
Apple isn’t targeting the business communtiy, they are targeting consumer users, and yes, there are enough consumer who will be making the “switch” to make a notable increase worldwide Mac marketshare.
In all honesty, I don’t think Apple will ever beat out the Microsoft/PC marketshare, but I do think we will see Mac marketshare up around 10% again!
I wonder how a 1.9g (in the iMac) power pc chip stacks up against a duo core 1.83. . . . .I mean wasn’t it argued that a factor of 1.5 was used to equate the risc & cisc chip performance. A 1.9 risc x 1.5 = 2.85 cisc? Shouldn’t this figure to be about the same or slightly better for a dual core, NOT 2-3x faster?.
RDF in play here?
Just a quick comment on the quote about Apps vendors such as Oracle and SAP… Unaware I guess, Oracle is a browser based Application suite and therefore does not require any specific platform to run on, i.e. a brower is a browsers is a browser.
From the techie side of Oracle, they have written versions of their tools and their database that work on the MAC. Plus just to note, Oracle themselves use xServers in house to run their Collaboration Suite for email, calendaring, meetings, etc.
I wonder if Claburn and Dunn should spend more time researching before they put they put their foot in their mouth.
id like to know the specific applications the these guys need. this would be pretty useful information for apple to have.
there are applicaions that are only on windows of course, i know some CAD apps, but what are the business apps that they they require? that arn’t on mac.
lets pressure them into building mac versions, as well as educate them on the total cost of ownership deal. i cant beleive that people still think that a dell is cheaper, when you get the final price including tax, and compare it to an apple system, the apple is usually MUCH MUCH cheaper, but i guess closed minded people dont even look.
also its a job protection issue, these IT managers dont switch or even consider apple because they are scared of it. they dont know about apple and how it can perform in a networked environment.
apple should definately package together advertising direct to possible businesses, outlining the benefits, simplicity etc.
but if you could have just one market what would it be? the consumer market with potential for great applications to run like iLife, or would you have the pretty drab affair of business? consumer market would win hands-down. maybe apple have decided to concentrate almost solely on consumers. makes sense.
agree that business and government applications of pc technology are almost universally biased towards windows and dell because of standards and price. disagree that this will not change because there are no apps for mac like oracle and sap.
both (oracle and sap) are moving to enterprise services models that are html/java based and macs do not lack the software to use those applications (apple may be wise here to get a special version of safari certified as an explorer clone-or this might be a nice job for the open source sorcerers). the biggest hurdles are the eyetee gatekeepers who want to minimize their headaches by specifying the simplest model for operations support in the name of cost savings when in reality their budget is the most wasted expenditure in any corporation.
in most large businesses, the people who use eyetee are not the ones that manage it. so saving the eyetee manager’s budget sometimes translates into sub-optimizing the real revenue generating portion of large organizations. save a nickel, lose a dollar. my personal observation is the less eyetee managment impacts the everyday workers life, the more they know about the tools they are using and the better job they do. it is an eyetee myth that to have an engineer worry about their computer is a waste of engineering time. these are some of the reasons businesses that have eyetee management departments don’t buy mac desktops.
btw, i think nsa (the spook folks) certify osx server as a secure enterprise server. windows server is approved conditionally (chuckle). sap requires unix or windows, oracle supports osx server. filemaker and 4d are best of class for small and midsize businesses. so the lack of business support is more of an support industry bias than a hardward or application bias.
the issue of mac desktop use in business is more promising because of the industry migration from the client server mopdel to the enterprise services model. the battle in the server room is quite a bit more challenging.
that said, i believe that the apple strategy to win the consumer war is probably more significant than the business desktop war. why? as a consumer, you or i do not have to deal with an eyetee bozo to buy the computer we want to use at home. kind of like redefining the mp3 market, apple is going to redefine the consumer electronic entertainment market. their competitors will not be dell and microsoft, but delivery folks like google and yahoo. end user competitors like sony and samsung. today apple has a lead. let’s see if they are smart enough to extend the mindshare they have today.
what people seem to forget is that the intel in the new apples is next gen. when it goes into pcs it will make old windows comps look slow too. not because its intel vs g5/g4 but because its new versus old tech.
I wonder how a 1.9g (in the iMac) power pc chip stacks up against a duo core 1.83. . . . .I mean wasn’t it argued that a factor of 1.5 was used to equate the risc & cisc chip performance. A 1.9 risc x 1.5 = 2.85 cisc? Shouldn’t this figure to be about the same or slightly better for a dual core, NOT 2-3x faster?.
RDF in play here?
Who said that current Intel chips ain’t RISC?
The legacy IBM PC instruction set (ie classic intel binary instruction set) is not RISC but Intel chips are very much so. They just use an intermediate microcode layer to appear CISC like to the software. So there you have it.
Not that it doesn’t matter, anyways. The notion that RISC is greatly advanced over CISC is an old prejudice of the academia. Like their favoring of the OSI network stack (which nobody really used!). Like their announcement some time ago that microkernels are THE thing of the future (well, Linus proved mr. Tanenbaum wrong in this one, and all three major OSs are either monolithic or hybrid, like OSX). Like they said that RDF (Resource Description Framework) and semantic web is the future. Anybody seen it, lately? Like they said (30 years ago!) that AI is really ready to be human-like. We know the results. Academia has its prejudices. And all eager young students take them at wholesale value and loom around forums passing on the “truth”. Well, I for one, am more pragmatic.
In this light, the RISC = 1.5 x CISC is a really silly calculation! WTF?! This is even more hilarious than the Mhz myth!
The new chips are not 2-3x faster, this is only on selected SPEC benchies, and quoted by Steve for marketing reasons. But they ARE 1.5 times faster (up to something like 2.5 times faster in special cases I guess). Newer generation, 65 m tech, re-designed pipeline, all count. Which is quite a feat for a CPU just out!
Oh, and Altivec is not the be all end all that steps all over SSE. Specially SSE3. It just has a better name, and people are took Steve wholesale when we cheered for it. Wait till he sings the praises of SSE3.
Hmmm. A computer with a brand new dual core processor is 2-3 times faster than one with a design that has barely advanced at all in the last 2 years. And that’s in the benchmarks, which are always going to be selective.
More worrying would be if the new dual core windows machines did not perform better than the outgoing pentium/centrino machines. There doesn’t seem to be much “New machines faster. The old ones must have really sucked” coming from the dark side.
What would be more interesting would be to see how the developer machines with single core old design Intel chips stack up against a G5 iMac.
So Apple look at the raodmap. A few years ago Intel was not as compelling as IBM. IBM have more interest in games consoles and drop the ball. Don’t have much on the roadmap for low power fast chips. Apple notebooks suffer terribly in terms of raw power at the hands of the G4. No end in sight. Apple look again to Intel, and they’ve got some new froody chips coming that would suit Apple much better than the IBM ones. So Apple switch. Perfectly sensible decision, but one that took a long time, largely, it would seem likely, due to being strung along by IBM.
Apple didn’t switch to the Intel of 3 years ago. They switched to the Intel of right now. And that’s a different beast.
So what I’m trying to say is that the IBM decision was right for the desktop, but in hindsight, wrong for the laptop. But it’s alwasys easier in hindsight.
Shouldn’t it be, “You can lead a horse to Kool-Aide…?”
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Unfortunately the article is correct. Large business are not going to change anytime soon. I work for a large corporation which does a fair amount of government work and unfortunately we’re a Dell <sigh> shop. I’ve heard every excuse from our IT guys (uh…folks…sorry) as to why we can not change. Ex 1) Our contracts requires XP, 2000, etc. 2) We have a ton of legacy code (which we wrote using Windows machines) that it would cost a fortune to convert, 3) Our VPN and other key software is Windows only, 4) Macs are more expensive and will require new investment, 5) etc.
The one, tiny sliver of hope of getting Mac machines in house is if they can dual boot with Windows. However, the functionality must come from either Apple or MS. My company will not consider hacks, freeware, shareware, etc.
Unfortunately, I doubt the company will ever change. Funny thing though, we have an “Employee Purchase Program with Apple” which give us 8-10% off goods from Apple stores. Definitely handy. Go figure.
Peace.
The new Core Duo iMacs don’t stack up very well against the G5 iMacs, according to results posted at Xbench (higher is better).
Core Duo Score: 48.58
G5 iMac Score: 149.62
2-3 times faster huh?
Core Duo: http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=150870
G5 iMac: http://db.xbench.com/merge.xhtml?doc1=79279
Can anyone explain why the Core Duo Xbench results are so bad? Those results I just posted can’t be right, can they?
Xbench is outdated and quite frankly is a joke. You can’t measure x86 vs PPC performance using that as a guide. It runs under Rosetta anyway, so of course the results are going to come back low.
apple uses sap.
and oracle uses apple.
this is a load of shit.
UGH.
Check out one of the sidebars on GoogleNews…
“A dangerous wireless security problem has been exposed in most laptops running a recent version of Windows”
http://www.theage.com.au/news/breaking/lurking-threat-for-wireless-laptops/2006/01/16/1137259984121.html
did that link work?
Bullsh*t. Xbench has been a universal binary for many months. Think up some other lie, RC.
I agree with Lurker_PC.
Apple will never have the large coporate and government markets. Sad but true. Every issue he mentioned I experienced it where I used to work.
I do think that the new machines will allow Apple to continue to do well in education and small/mid size biz.
From page 2 of the story: “Only 8% of those not using Apple computers said the shift to Intel chips will cause them to reconsider using the computers”
Fine. If we can get just a forth of that 8% it would be a huge boost to Apple’s marketshare and total sales. Baby steps at this point.
No one is suggesting that all business just chuck all their systems out the window (pun intended) and replace them with Macs. They don’t even do that with their existing PC’s when upgrading them, usually it’s a slow process anyway.
What it does suggest is that small businesses are more likely to embrace the new technology and big companies could consider using some Macs in certain environments as part of a more secure multi-OS environment. Once people get accustomed to them, and learn the benefits, and remove the myths and objections, then we can start to talk about longer term large scale migrations.
This takes time. Give it a few years. Apple’s on the right track with this.
OK, it’s worth a re-hash here. Only time will tell, but Information week may be in for a surprise.
From the early days, when a PC with the name “IBM” on it became available, I.T. buyers have played it safe. In the 80’s, they didn’t have to drag out their crystal balls to predict whether or not their computer would be supported two or three years in the future. Based only on the buzz in both geek and business circles as a result of IBM’s entry, they could project with some confidence that today’s decision wouldn’t cause them to loose their jobs three years down the road.
It’s the same situation today. I.T. guys (and gals) have to look out for “Number 1” (as in: feed their family and keep a roof over their childrens’ heads). Most know the Mac is better and more stable but few are willing to put their necks on the line by using their employer’s capital budget to make a wholesale change in a computing standard just because it’s a “superior user experience” (pronounced with a lisp). No one looses their job because a Windows computer has to be re-booted twice a day.
It’s an uncommon business that permits its employees to make bold, risky moves without fear of job-jeopardizing reproductions if things go south. Examples of such businesses are those with bosses that REALLY know what makes people tick, and highly technical or scientific organizations that aren’t intimidated by technically arcane details. So why in the world would one expect I.T. people at your common, semi-idiotic American business to do anything but take the safe bet, no matter how mediocre it is?
More problematic for Apple is the widespread use in American business of vertical market niche applications for such things as material resource planning (MRP software). These applications are incredibly complex, rarely available cross-platform, and companies are completely dependent on them. Consequently, they can only put Macs in “art departments” because employees there don’t give a holy crap if they have an installed seat of their company’s MRP program or not.
Apple’s move to Intel chips provides a huge, HUGE opportunity if properly exploited. For one, not only can Macs run Microsoft Office (they always could), but they can now run these companies’ vertical market, niche applications such as their MRP software. The question is: How easy will it be to simultaneously run both Office and their MRP on the new Intel-based Macs? Will you have to “cube-over” to your MRP (?) or will it just shrink over to the dock? Is Apple going to provide an in-house solution or rely on some purposely crippled Microsoft solution? If Apple does this right and squashes most of the bugs, an I.T. manager could place Macs as both servers AND clients all over their company’s desktops. The advantage for them would be immediate: their users’ computers don’t crash every day and they would be at much reduced risk of a virus bringing their system down. The I.T. guy looks good. And still, the I.T. guy could have the confidence that if things go south, he could erase all their OS X software and install barbarian software that would still run on all their Apple-made Intel boxes.
All Apple needs to do is show I.T. managers three things: 1) how easy it is to integrate Macs over a multi-month period without pissing off employees and their managers during the transition, 2) how, even when Windows is simultaneously running on the Mac, OS X is as crash-free as it currently is, and 3) that there is a viable (low cost) plan to revert back to square-one if everything goes to hell in a hand basket.
Apple is running its company on the Mac platform, and they don’t seem to be doing to badly. Smart businesses consider ALL their options.
One of those interviewed said that when served and maintained and controlled tightly, PCs run without problems.
Maybe that is one part of the reluctance? What would those people do if they switched to Macs?
I concur- The latest version of SAP (the number#1 ERP app) runs native on Mac OSX.
So this guy doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.
How this reminds me of a wonderful poem by Sam Walter Foss, “The Calf Path.”
Yeah. Interesting observation from meatofmoose. Business today is following 30-year-old calf path.
Wingsy,
Nice job cherry picking – the average for the iMac G5 is 64 or so, which is not far off from the iMac Intels you chose. There was a grand total of TWO Intel iMacs compared to 2200 iMac G5s. And the iMac G5 results ranged all the way down to 37.
Why not give somebody a chance to optimize their system and submit results before crying “Wolf”?
FOR GOD’S SAKE. IT’S “LOSES” WHEN SOMETHING IS LOST, NOT “LOOSES” (NO SUCH WORD). LOOSE BECOMES LOOSEN, AS IN “IF ONE MORE PERSON MIS-USES THESE WORDS, I WILL LOSE IT. LOOSEN MY TIE, AND LOSE MY LUNCH.” HOOKED ON PHONICS APPARENTLY LEFT OUT THE EXCEPTIONS TO THE DOUBLE VOWEL RULE.
“”
‘The current version of the Mac OS is far superior to the Windows OS as far as the user interface and the security you can set up,’ he says. ‘But the type of chip in the system isn’t the deciding factor. It’s basically the operating system and functionality they wrap around it.’ That means Apple is unlikely to increase its share of the business market any time soon.
“”
Reworded: Mac OS is superior to Windows OS, but it isn’t hardware that’s important, it’s the OS. Therefore it doesn’t matter which OS is superior.
Huh?
A general complaint for most essential software arguements:
There is no such thing as mission critical software, only mission critical data. You should never restrict your mission critical data to a single solution (platform or application) because then you don’t own it – the application vendor does.
MW = “glass” an in “through the glass darkly”
Looses is a transitive verb.
Truth–
You Can Lead A Horse To Water But You Can’t Make Him Drink.
Any good salesman will tell you that it isn’t your job to make him drink. It’s your job to make him thirsty. Steve knows this.